Video Card Testing Methodology

Benchmark Reviews has high hopes that one day we will be so giant and world famous that every combination of the graphic card available will be on-hand for our product testing... and we're getting closer! I envy the review sites that have twenty other video cards tested in stand-alone, SLI, and CrossFireX arrays for each and every review. Eventually we will be that big, and offer all of those configurations. Readers can help us grow to that size by spreading the word, but for now we'll have to make due with what our budget can afford. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is going to test and compare the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic Edition graphics card against several other closely-ranked products from within the GeForce family.

At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro. We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. The synthetic benchmark tests in 3DMark06 will utilize shader models 2.0 and 3.0. In our higher-end VGA products we conduct tests at the following resolutions: 1280x1024 (19" Standard LCD), 1680x1050 (22-24" Widescreen LCD), and 1920x1200 (24-28" Widescreen LCD). In some tests we utilized widescreen monitor resolutions, since more users are beginning to feature these products for their own computing.

Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict and Supreme Commander benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.

Our site polls and statistics indicate that the over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using a screen resolutions mentioned above. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, I feel that this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. Since most gamers and enthusiasts are still using Windows XP, it was decided that DirectX 9 would be used for all tests until demand and software support improve for Windows Vista.

Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS P5E64 WS Pro (Intel X38 Chipset)
• Processor: Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz (Overclocked to 3.6 GHz)
• System Memory: Patriot PC3-15000 DDR3 1866MHz 2GB RAM Kit
• Optical Drive: ASUS BC-1205PT SATA Blu-ray Disc Optical Drive
• Enclosure: Ultra m998 Aluminum Mid-Tower ATX Case ULT40069
• PSU: Ultra X-Pro 800W Aluminum ULT33185
• Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 245BW Widescreen LCD
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP-3

Benchmark Applications

• 3DMark06 v1.1.0 (8x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare v1.7.568 (4x AA/16x Trilinear AF)
• Crysis v1.21 Benchmark (High Settings, 0x and 4x Anti-Aliasing)
• World in Conflict v1.0.0.9 Performance Test (Very High Setting: 4x AA/4x AF)

Video Card Test Products

• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 102-B50102-00-AT (Catalyst 8.9)
• Palit GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Sonic NE/960TSX0202 (Forceware v177.79)
• Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ 1GB NE/9800TXT302 (Forceware v177.79)
• Foxconn GeForce 9800 GTX OC 512MB 9800GTX-512N (Forceware v177.79)
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 100243L (Catalyst 8.9)

Now we're ready to begin testing video game performance on the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ 1GB Video Card NE/9800TXT302, so please continue to the next page as we start with the 3DMark06 results.

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